Kindle Fire

[Beantown Red]

Not bad for $199

 

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Update: Itching for specs? How's about a 7-inch IPS (!) panel, Gorilla Glass coating, a 1GHz TI OMAP dual-core CPU, 512MB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage and a chassis that weighs 14.6 ounces. There's also access to things you'd expect to have access to: Android Appstore (though no access to Google's Android Market!), Kindle books, magazines, etc. -- all stored for free via Amazon Cloud Storage. Per Jeff: "Delete it and get it back when you want." Oh, and Whispersync now works with movies and TV shows! "When you get home, switch to your big screen TV. Your movie will be right where you left it." While it's clearly Android underneath, the actual UI looks effectively nothing like it -- considering TechCrunch's intel that Amazon went and did its own thing without Google's blessing, we guess that makes some level of sense. Oh, and pre-orders are set to start today (but only for Americans... boo), with shipments heading out on November 15th.

 

engadget

 

The Kindle Fire, on its launch, will run a customized Android 2.3 OS (Gingerbread) on a TI OMAP 4 dual-core processor [5]. Though it will include 8GB internal storage - said to be enough for 80 apps, plus either 10 movies or 800 songs or 6,000 books - it will not have expandable storage like a microSD slot provided by Nook Color. Connectivity options are limited to WiFi (b/g/n) and USB 2.0 (micro-B connector) and will not have 3G at launch time.

 

Besides access to Amazon Appstore, the Kindle Fire will include a cloud-accelerated "split browser" called Amazon Silk, free storage for all of the user's Amazon digital content in the Amazon Cloud, built-in email app that gets webmail (Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, AOL etc.) into a single inbox and a free Month of Amazon Prime (which includes unlimited, instant streaming of over 10,000 movies and TV shows and Free Two-Day Shipping on millions of items) at the time of its launch.

 

Content formats supported are Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively, Audible (Audible Enhanced (AA, AAX)), DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, non-DRM AAC, MP3, MIDI, OGG, WAV, MP4, VP8. It does not support the standard EPUB book format used by Google Books and other publishers.

 

Wikipedia

 

Continued

 

Because of Fire's low price ($199) "Amazon is going to jump start the (tablet market) the way Netflix did (for online video) a few years ago," Rayburn said. "They're going to put a tablet into the hands of the mass market, where the iPad right now is not affordable enough."

 

And Rayburn predicts Amazon to do a better job in the future of marketing Prime. He also doesn't expect Netflix to hold on to its lead in the amount of streaming content for very long. He said Amazon is adding movies and TV shows at a much faster rate than Netflix did at the same point in its history.

 

"In January of 2008, Netflix confirmed it had about 12,000 titles available for streaming," Rayburn wrote last October. "In September of 2009, ads on their website put that number at 17,000. Today, it appears that Netflix has about 20,000 titles for streaming, although Netflix won't confirm that number for me. If that number is accurate, it means that Netflix has only added about 4,000 movies a year for the past two years."

 

Amazon's streaming service boasted 5,000 at launch last February. The company says it has 11,000 now or an increase of 6,000 titles in six months. And don't forget, Amazon has the suppliers on its side. The major Hollywood studios don't want a single company dominating any distribution category and Netflix for a while appeared to be on its way to doing that. Studios and TV networks want competition among distributors.

 

They also want partners that will try to sell and rent movies on a per-title basis, which Amazon does, instead of an all-you-can-eat model, which Netflix does. There's more money for Hollywood in an ala-carte service.

 

Separate from the 11,000 streaming titles offered to Prime members, Amazon offers 100,000 movies and TV shows for rent or to own on a per-title basis. These are available for streaming as well as download.

 

Consumers have overwhelmingly shown that they prefer Netflix's model. What remains to be seen is whether that will hold true if competitors, such as Amazon, offer a better selection of titles.

 

Read more: Amazon fires on Netflix | Media Maverick - CNET News

 

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[1892-LFCWasBorn]

The only problem with this is getting stuff on to the Kindle without paying. Amazon will have a stranglehold on this. Might be wrong on this, but guessing you'll need to sync it with an Amazon app (never used or owned a kindle).

 

Currently have an android tab with 32GB of apps/movies/music that I've not paid a penny for.

 

The big positive about the price point is that it will force other tablet manufacturers to slash their prices to compete as Amazon as a brand is fucking massive with the potential to be serious market competitor.

[Guest ShoePiss]

The only problem with this is getting stuff on to the Kindle without paying. Amazon will have a stranglehold on this. Might be wrong on this, but guessing you'll need to sync it with an Amazon app (never used or owned a kindle).

 

Currently have an android tab with 32GB of apps/movies/music that I've not paid a penny for.

 

The big positive about the price point is that it will force other tablet manufacturers to slash their prices to compete as Amazon as a brand is fucking massive with the potential to be serious market competitor.

 

Girlfriend has a kindle and it's just a matter of dragging and dropping stolen books onto it.

 

It won't be an issue just like it isn't on the ipad after a simple jailbreak.

[Bobby Hundreds]

For me the only reason to have a kindle is e-ink. If its backlit theres not much point I doubt its going to have the amount of apps or options as itunes.

[CrouchieBoy]

I think the comparison of the Kindle Fire & iPad is a bit off. The fire is an e-reader beefed up with some more features. Don't see how this effects the iPad or any other tablet computer.

 

The one thing I am intrigued about is the movie/TV streaming for Amazon Prime members. Need to reup my subscription but it's definitely money well spent.

[stevensr123]

I think the comparison of the Kindle Fire & iPad is a bit off. The fire is an e-reader beefed up with some more features. Don't see how this effects the iPad or any other tablet computer.

 

The one thing I am intrigued about is the movie/TV streaming for Amazon Prime members. Need to reup my subscription but it's definitely money well spent.

 

Actually if you consider the fire just a beefed up version of an e-reader, then you might as well say the same thing about the iPad.

 

I am probably going to get one of these, apparently amazon are giving you unlimited cloud storage to upload all your content into the cloud. Which is amazing.

 

I think it's also got the same type of display as the iPad, looks like a bargain at 199$